1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and program for managing devices in a network.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Common Information Model (CIM) is an industry standard specification to allow for the interchange of management information in a network environment including devices from different vendors, where the network may include heterogenous as well as homogeneous devices. The CIM schema specifies a set of classes, including methods and objects, that management programs call to obtain information and perform management operations with respect to devices in the network. Each vendor of a network device that is capable of interfacing in a CIM environment must provide a set of device specific APIs that implement the CIM classes. A vendor would provide a CIM Provider, which is a program module that maps CIM APIs or methods, as defined by the industry standard CIM model, to device specific APIs that may implement the functionality of a defined CIM API for the specific device. The term “CIM API” as used herein refers to any method, interface or function that is called to perform an operation defined within the CIM management schema.
There is a continued need in the art to provide device vendors improved techniques to develop CIM providers that provide the device specific APIs to implement CIM APIs to allow their devices to participate in a CIM network environment and interface with management applications issuing management related requests as CIM APIs.